A True Creepy Story for Halloween

I am leaving to go watch the Halloween parade at the big kids` school. Daughter is a witch -- Hub bought her a really great costume and I didn`t ask how much he paid for it. Big Son is a ninja. He wasn`t satisfied with the authenticity of any of the ready-made ninja costumes, so he made his own: I bought him an oversized black hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants, and he tied a few black scarfs around himself. Little Son will wear his Superman costume from last year, which fortunately still fits.

In the spirit of the holiday, I will tell a creepy story that really happened to me this year.

As most of you know, we bought a place in Japan shortly before we moved to San Francisco. It took us over a year to find a place we liked, and we made three ultimately unsuccessful attempts to buy other properties. We backed out of two of them -- one had flood water issues, and the other was a foreclosure sale involoving a bankrupt owner who was still living there. After that house had a mysterious kitchen fire, we decided it would just be too much trouble. The story I am about to tell is "the one that got away."

In the heart of central Tokyo, near the American Club, Russian Embassy, and Nissin supemarket, is a tiny neighborhood called Azabu-Mamiana-cho. The "Mamiana" part literally means "Racoon Dog Hollow," and while the neighborhood now lacks racoon dogs it is indeed in a small cleft between two hills. At the bottom is a park, with a playground, benches around a fountain, a small shrine with a red torii gate, and lots of very tall trees -- taller than most trees in central Tokyo. The playground is nothing special, but we lived nearby and we often went to this park because we liked the trees.

The lot right next to our favorite little park was put up for sale. We couldn`t afford all of it, but we did the math and realized we could (barely) afford to buy half of it, and have a small house built on it. It was right across from a weeping willow tree -- these are somewhat creepy trees in Japan. Hub says the spirits of dead people live inside them.

Hub is highly superstitious, so I figured I had better tell him one funny thing. Ever since we had moved to this neighborhood, I had been having a recurring dream that there was a graveyard in the park. These were not scary dreams at all. I had one sad dream about a woman in a kimono digging a small grave for a baby, but for the most part, they were kind of nice dreams. Usually, the sun was shining as I walked through the tombstones, and I would be thinking, "These people must have led very happy lives in such a beautiful place." Since my dreams weren`t scary, I saw no reason that we shouldn`t go ahead and try to buy the lot.

Alas, the owners wouldn`t divide the lot in half, and we couldn`t afford to buy all of it, so that was that. A few months later, we bought a much cheaper place in the same neighborhood.

On the day we submitted our bid on the place we would buy, there was a big windstorm, and the willow tree in the park was uprooted and blew down. I remember walking to work that day, and thinking, "Oh well, whoever buys the lot won`t have a view of a creepy tree."

Eventually, someone else did buy the entire lot next to the park, and started constructing a four-story building. I used to take Little Son to go watch the constuction site. It was going to be a large steel-framed building, so the foundation was very deep.

Okay, switch on the creepy music soundtrack now ("nee, nee, nee, nee....."). One day we went to watch, and found the site crawling with archeologists. I asked the construction manager what was going on, and he said, "Graves. We found graves." And as he said this I noticed a big plastic crate filled with human bones, and got a shiver down my spine.

The archeologists, who were from the city ward office, told me they had found some coins with the bones that dated the graves as early Edo, around 1600.

Later that evening, I realized the construction crew and archeologists had all left for the day, and left the box of bones behind. The construction site was fenced off, but I could see them through the cracks between the tarps. It had started to rain -- shouldn`t the bones be covered? Or, after 400 years underground, did the warm summer rain feel good to them?

I bought some flowers and put them next to the bones -- some yellow and white chrysanthemums, which are what you`re supposed to offer dead people in Japan.

One thought did not excape me: if we had bought that lot, we would not have built a big steel-framed building. We would have built a small wood-framed house that wouldn`t have needed a deep foundation. So.... we would have built our house right over the 400-year old graves.

This story has a funny ending. I told Hub about the bones, and I expected it to really freak him out -- but he was not at all impressed. He`s from central Kyoto, a 1,200-year old city demolished and rebuilt many times over, and as he said, "You can`t dig a hole in Kyoto without finding bones. Bones are everywhere. Who cares?"

Well.... I care!

Happy Halloween.

Life`s Many Mysteries

Big Son asked me, after church today, "Do people ever get bored in heaven?"

I remember worrying about this when I was his exact age, right about the time I got in trouble for asking at what point in the digestive process does the consecrated communion wafer cease being the body of Jesus Christ, and become ordinary shit. Is it after you chew it? Is it at the point it`s no longer recognizable, or does it stay consecrated right up to its point of exit? I don`t remember what the answer was, but I remember our Catechism teacher made me go stand out in the hall.

Later, I asked my grandmother, and she told me that "God leaves the bread and goes into your body and your mind as soon as you swallow the host, so don`t think about that anymore, okay?"

Today I told Big Son, no, people don`t get bored -- if it were boring, it wouldn`t be Heaven, would it?

That`s exactly what my grandmother told me, when I asked her the same question.

Poor Hub.

Poor Hub just learned the hard way that when an invitation says, "Black tie/formal attire," it does NOT mean that you should show up in a striped suit and a pink Banana Republic tie, or you will feel silly and out of place. Well, that is, some guys would -- including Hub, who just drove all the way home from Burlingame to change.

I am imagining his tie, shining like a neon sign in a roomful of his tux-clad countrymen.... I would probably approach someone wearing a tie like that, and try to strike up a conversation. Perhaps this is what Hub wants to avoid --- a whole evening of drunken strangers walking up to him and saying, "Hey! Nice tie!"

He was so mortified that I actually felt sorry for him -- although he is attending the $250-plate Japan Society centennial dinner, while I`m home eating my usual concoction of cheese and salsa on rice cakes (black tie optional, no reservations required.... and BYOB).

Sleeping With the Enemy, File #2

Our big kids go to Japanese school all day on Saturday, starting this month. So far, they hate it, because they never have their homework done and they`re never prepared for any of the quizzes, because their father has worked late every night and hasn`t helped them (or has returned early some nights but watched TV with them instead of studying), and their mother refuses to help them because she`s busy helping them with their English homework every day and can`t do everything, for fuckssake. Their mother lies in bed on Saturday morning and lets their father get them ready for Japanese school himself.

I told the kids, just do your best, and I figure Hub will either 1) get with the program, or 2) decide that this is a waste of time and money, and think of something else.

So I was lying in bed this morning, and Hub marches up the stairs into the room and announces, "Daughter says she has no clean socks."

"Look in her sock drawer," I say. Hub marches back down the stairs. Presumably, he finds socks, because there are some on her feet when she leaves the house.

Upon further reflection, I have to ask, shouldn`t looking in her sock drawer be the FIRST thing to do, instead of climbing the stairs to tell me about it? Wouldn`t ya think?

Is this a GUY thing, or a Japanese thing? It could be either -- it`s very bottom-up Japanese management style: the people below inform the higher-ups of the situation, and await instuctions on how to proceed. But that would assume that he thinks of me as a higher-up... so, this must be a GUY thing.

I can`t blame everything on his culture -- some of it is just his gender.

Extra! Extra! Report Card Day Not As Bad As Expected!

Today was report card day for Big Son and Daughter, and there was not an F to be found, nor even an "incomplete." Instead, we had a smattering of mostly C`s, and only one D+ -- Daughter got that in reading. It`s kind of amazing they gave her a passing grade at all, since she`s nowhere near a third grade level.

Both kids got A`s in art, but we all know that doesn`t count. Ha, ha, just trying to piss off a few artists among my friends, who I know read my blog. KIDDING, okay? Sheesh!

The surprise: Big Son got an A- in math, despite the fact that he and his math teacher get along about as well as India and Pakistan. Big Son also got an A in handwriting. If there`s any way to win over the heart of an elderly nun.... it`s by having very, very NICE handwriting, which Big Son does.

Considering how much my kids are struggling, these grades show that there`s a real chance that they will at least make it to the next grade next year, which is all I`m hoping for at this point. They have the rest of their lives to excel -- right now, it`s "catch up" time.

Little Son, of course, doesn`t get grades at his preschool yet. I had his parent/teacher conference yesterday, at which his teacher told me with some alarm that he`s fearless, and likes to jump off high places. "Yeah," I said. "He once jumped into the deep end of the pool, chasing his brother. I jumped in after him, and he thought this was great and wanted to do it again." The teacher now seems a bit worried about liability issues....

Car Talk, or Why the New York Times Has Ruined My Driving Experience Forever

Yes, I really mailed the letter in the previous post. I had to shorten it to make it fit on one page, and I did take out the part about my son losing his soccer game, because who the hell cares? Surely not the Parking Police -- they can`t even tell ass from navel, er... grass from gravel.

But I might end up paying the ticket after all, because I`m driving a rented car, and I imagine Enterprise has some Draconian policy about returning cars with outstanding tickets. I probably signed a rental agreement that said in teeny tiny print that if all tickets are not paid in full when the vehicle is returned, they will take out the maximum allowable cash advance on my credit card, keep it, and then bill me for 10 times that amount, with daily interest charges at 24.7% of amount owed, and then come to our house and steal all our Halloween candy, too, just to be mean.

I am driving a rental car because my brand new Mazda 5 minivan was recalled OVER A MONTH AGO for an exhaust problem. The repair is taking forever, because the dealer said they`re still waiting for the part to come from Japan. DO NOT GET ME STARTED RANTING, about a former industrial power in decline. In the meantime, the Mazda dealer took me to Enterprise and rented me the only car in the lot that fit six passengers.... a big huge honking white ocean liner of a Ford Freestar that gets something like 2 mpg.

This is ironic, because when left our carless Tokyo life behind in July and had to buy cars here, I impressed upon Hub that even though we needed a vehicle that seats six, I absolutely could not, ever, under any circumstances, drive anything BIG.

For one thing, I am cheap, and gas is not. For another thing, I can`t exactly put a "No More Blood For Oil" bumper sticker on an SUV, can I? And finally, I must confess, when it comes to PARKING, I am severely challenged. I have very poor hand/eye coordination and depth perception, and this is a deadly combination for the bumpers of whatever vehicle I happen to be driving. I would rather park two miles away from my destination in an easy-to-enter-and-exit parking space than parallel park right in front of it. Anyone who has ever seen me try to park an ordinary sedan can vouch for this -- can you imagine the HORROR of me, behind the wheel of a Ford Freestar?

Of course, if both gas and cars were free, I would probably drive this -- doesn`t it look like a giant kitchen gadget? Wow, their designers really got MY number. I could be one hell of a soccer mom with 450 horsepower.

Except for the recall (which, admittedly, is a pretty big "except for...."), I was very satisifed with our Mazda 5....until Sunday, when the NY Times ran this article, entitled, "How I Learned Not to Worry and Just Love the Minivan." The article`s teaser said, "You will not travel to the moon in a Mazda 5, but to the grocery store, soccer field and all the other typical places where minivans go. However you'll actually look stylish doing it. "

Can I tell you about the sinking feeling I got when I read that? Can I tell you that I do not give a rat`s ass if I look "stylish," as my entire LIFE flashes before my eyes??? Did I need to be reminded that the highlights of my current life do indeed include driving to the grocery store and the soccer field? But there it is, in black and white, in the New York Fucking Times -- if you drive one of these, "YOU WILL NOT TRAVEL TO THE MOON." Face it.... it`s all over. Give up your dreams. Resign yourself to your boring life. All paths of glory lead but to the grave.

And the ultimate irony is.... I`m not even driving it. It`s sitting in the dealer`s lot, waiting for a part to arrive from the country I`m missing. Not only does Japan still hold a major portion of my heart.... they`ve got my exhaust component, too.

Signed, One Pissed Off Soccer Mom.

To person(s) dealing with the following at the San Francisco Department of Parking & Traffic:

I am writing to protest citation number 15097865, issued Oct. 22 at the Beach Chalet Soccer Field parking lot.

As you can see, the ticket describes the violation as "NO PARKING ON GRASS."

This confused me, because I looked under my car and saw only gravel and a bit of dirt -- not a spot of vegetation to be found. I tried to take a photo of this, but I wasn`t able to capture an image that did justice to the scene -- they all came out looking like brownish-grey blurs with the shadow of a car`s wheels.

Not only was there no grass to be found, but there was also a dearth of "NO PARKING" signs in that area at the far end of the parking lot. I thought of photographing this, too, but how does one capture the absence of something? Should I have taken lots of photos of the shrubbery, with no signs to block the view?

As a rule, I do not park in fire lanes, near hydrants, in front of curbs painted red, or anywhere near a sign that spells out, "NO PARKING ." I would never - NEVER! - dream of parking on grass, and contribute to the destruction of this city`s greenery, and probably get my wheels stuck for good measure.

I prefer to park on asphalt with a clearly marked parking space, but when such spaces are all occupied, and I am in a parking lot and see a large grassless patch of gravel at the end, with other cars lined up neatly in a row, and no signs telling anyone not to park there, is it not natural to assume that the gravel is an extension of the parking lot? And yet I still found a ticket waiting for me after my son`s soccer game (which his team lost, incidentally, 3-0).

If there are no signs, and no grass -- how is anyone supposed to know that they are not permitted to park there? After all, the area in question is in a parking lot, which by definition is for.... parking.

I would therefore like to request a review of the citation.

Thank you,

L.

We`re still filling in a few holes.

Today Big Son`s Main Nun told me he claimed he didn`t know what a crucifix was.
Oops.....

No, we don`t have one at home. But we will be getting a nice Buddhist family alter someday, when Hub inherits it.

Prop 73

Since Hub is not a U.S. citizen, he can`t vote. This is okay, since he has very little interest in the political process. When I told him about the various propositions on the California ballot, his eyes glazed over..... until I mentioned Proposition 73, which would ban abortion for a minor until 48 hours after a physician notifies her parent or legal guardian. Hub perked right up.

"I want to know if my daughter has an abortion!" said Hub. "You`d better vote for that one!"

Perhaps he`s seen the billboards -- I saw one the other day, of an innocent-looking young girl being led by a wild-eyed hoodlum. "Protect Our Daughters - Yes on 73," it said.

The problem with Prop 73 is that it pits two important rights against each other: the right of parents/guardians to determine what is best for a minor in their care, which I basically support, versus the right of an individual to make a major decision about her own body, which I also basically support.

Hub has a daughter, but he`s never been a daughter. I have been on both sides of the fence -- I was once the minor daughter of pro-life parents, who would have certainly never given me permission to have an abortion. Notification would have been tantamount to buying me a ticket to a home for unwed mothers. My mother used to say that even if she were raped and impregnated, she would carry the baby to term. By extension, I took this to mean that if I were ever raped and impregnated while still a minor, she would have done all she could to force me to gestate the baby, too.

My parents allowed me to pierce my ears, but wouldn`t let me put a second piercing in one, when I asked them if I could get it done -- they didn`t want me to look like "one of them punk rockers," I guess.

So I did it myself, with some ice cubes and alcohol and a big sewing needle, and it got very infected. I imagine if they had forced me to carry an unwanted baby, I would have done something very similar, but on a much larger scale and at much greater risk of life-threatening damage.

I`ve read Prop 73 in its entirety. It includes a clause in which a pregnant teen can bypass notification with the permission of a judge. This is some comfort, but what if the judge refuses to grant the waiver, and turns the teen back over to her parents? And what if her parents are like my parents, and don`t think that the girl`s mental or physical health risks can ever in any circumstances outweigh the right of the embryo to develop and be born?

Prop 73 also defines abortion as causing "death of the unborn child, a child conceived but not yet born." I don`t think that`s calling a spade a spade -- I don`t think an embryo or fetus is a child, anymore than it`s a teenager or senior citizen. In time and with luck, it will become an infant, a toddler, an adult, an elderly person, and I would agree that it is in fact a teeny tiny human being, but to call it a "child," or even a "baby," is getting ahead of the game.

I guess while I generally believe parents have a right to know about a medical procedure about to be performed on their daughter, I wish there were some way of guaranteeing they had no right to veto her choice, either way. I know a horror story on the other side -- I once taught English to a lawyer in Japan, who had as a client a pregnant 15-year old who wanted to have a baby against her parents` wishes. The court sided with the parents, and she was forced to terminate her pregnancy at 7 months. The lawyer, himself the father of a young daughter, said the case would haunt him forever.

The best idea for parental notification that I`ve heard is that the pregnant girl be required to identify her sexual partner, and that his parents be notified, too -- even if he`s not a minor. Heck, especially if he`s not a minor. Or better yet, require a male to notify a minor girl`s parents 48 hours before he has sex with her. These would never get on the ballot -- but wow, would they make people think about the extent to which we want to take the issue of parental notification.

(When I`m not commenting on parenting blogs, I can sometimes be found commenting at this site, this site and this site -- regularly playing "devil`s advocate" at the last two.)

Debebam laborare....

I should be helping Big Son with his homework right now, but instead I`m sipping some vanilla vodka and eating candy corn. Does it get any more decadent than this?

Social Studies Sister says she has not yet decided whether to give Big Son an "F" or an "incomplete" for the term that just ended. I didn`t know what to say -- let her figure it out. She gave me the fourth grade social studies book, which I`m supposed to study with him at home. It actually looks fun -- it`s a history of the state, called, "Oh, California!" The title reminds me of the long-running Broadway naked play, "Oh, Calcutta!" So I will be picturing everyone naked, from the conquistadors to the `49ers, founding this great state in the buff. I meant the gold rush `49ers, not the football team -- but it wouldn`t hurt to picture them in the buff, either.

Big Son will probably also get a failing grade in his science class. He has a really great teacher, a man who retired after a long career in the SF public school system, and wanted to keep working for a while. The Science Guy has a Japanese wife and three ravishing half-Japanese daughters. He even gave Big Son a few textbooks in Japanese so he wouldn`t fall behind, and has tried a few times to speak to Big Son in Japanese. But this made Big Son very nervous and he refused to speak back -- he says he wants to keep his Japanese studying separate from his English studying, which makes sense to me. But whenever the Science Guy tries to get Big Son to summarize what he`s learned in science class so far, Big Son just giggles. I think this is a behavorial problem more than a comprehension problem -- I mean, Big Son did his last Japanese science project on global warming, so he`s capable of understanding complex scientific concepts. Big Son seems to think science class is a lot of fun and he can weasel out of lots of the work because of his lagging reading skills. So maybe an "F" is exactly what he needs to make him take it more seriously.

Okay, I can`t put it off any longer. Time to get cracking....after one more shot of vanilla vodka.

Long May He Reign.

There was no assembly this morning at my kids` school, because it`s too cold and wet and foggy.

Usually, the whole tiny school (less than 200 kids, grades K through 8) assemble in the schoolyard and start their day with a kind of "thank you for this day and whatever it brings" prayer, and then they salute the flag and sing the national anthem.

I had forgotten to explain to my kids what the Pledge of Allegiance was, and they were bewildered the first day at their new school. I still haven`t bothered to teach them the words -- as long as they stand respectfully, that seems to be good enough for their teachers, and it`s good enough for me. And as for singing "The Star Spangled Banner," if they can hit the high notes, great, but that song is so unsingable I don`t know why they bother. I wonder why a parochial school doesn`t sing "God Bless America" instead -- I think they missed an opportunity there to sing a better song.

But I`m not very picky. Up until just a few months ago, my kids were saluting the Rising Sun flag, and singing a song called "Kimigayo," or "His Majesty's Reign," at their school assemblies. It goes like this:

May the reign of the Emperor continue for a thousand, nay, eight thousand generations and for the eternity that it takes for small pebbles to grow into a great rock and become covered with moss.

While I admit I like the poetic nature part despite its weird reverse geology (small pebbles growing into great rocks?), it did bug me just a tad that my kids were singing Japan`s wartime anthem, a hymn to the divine leader in whose name Japan invaded and ravaged a large swatch of Asia.

Oddly enough, it bugged Hub A LOT -- I say "oddly" because at the risk of outing poor Hub, I will reveal one important identifying detail about him: he works for his country`s government. It`s a stable job with a decent salary, but I think he earns much less than he could get if he ever went over to the private sector. He is not willing to consider doing this, however, because he finds great meaning and fulfillment serving Japan.

So Hub is more patriotic than the average citizen, but this is very different from being nationalistic, and he says hearing innocent children singing a song with wartime connotations always bothers him. Whenever we attended school events, I noticed he would always flick off our video recorder when the kids sang Kimigayo. And another thing I noticed -- most of the kids` grandparents would be singing along with the kids, but most of the parents stood there as silent as Hub. I have no idea whether they shared his strong feelings, but it was clear that members of Hub`s generation didn`t feel comfortable singing it for one reason or another.

Hub`s hometown had a communist government when he was growing up, and no students sang Kimigayo. In fact, he claims he doesn`t even know all the words. It wasn`t until 1990 that public school teachers were even told they should teach students to pay respect to both Japan`s flag and its national anthem.

Two years ago, in October 2003, Tokyo formalized this respect, and made saluting the flag and singing the anthem mandatory at public school graduation and school entrance ceremonies. Teachers who do not rise, face the flag and sing themselves are supposed to be turned in to face discipline. A few lost their jobs over this, and made local headlines. But our kids had no idea any of this was going on -- their teachers all toed the line, so the students sang the song and saluted the flag with no inkling of the bigger picture.

And I guess that`s how I feel about the pledge now -- the bigger picture can wait. I feel neither the need to object to my kids reciting a loyalty oath they don`t understand, nor the need to teach them the words at this point. My kids are confused enough, and are still trying to sort out what country and culture they belong to. They haven`t yet realized that there`s good and bad in every country, and that home is wherever your loved ones happen to be.

I am relieved, though, that Hub has no problem with the kids reciting Catholic prayers and singing church hymns. A lot of pretty bad stuff was done in God`s name, too.

Bonus post, to cheer up Hub.

As a bonus post today, to cheer up poor Hub, I`ll do a single item from one of "The 7 Things..." meme that is making the rounds in the blog world, to which Granny (of http://rocrebelgranny.blogspot.com/) among others has challenged me.

These will have to wait for another day ---
"The 7 Things To Do Before I Die, 7 Things I Can Do, 7 Things I Cannot Do, 7 Celebrity Crushes" -- and "Celebrity Crushes" will have to wait longest of all, because right now, I can`t even think of seven celebrities. What counts as a celebrity, anyway? Do they have to be living celebrities?

The one that`s left is "7 Things That Attract Me To The Opposite Sex:"

1) Sense of humor.
2) Sense of humor.
3) Sense of humor.
4) Sense of humor.
5) Sense of humor.
6) Sense of humor.
7) Good hygiene.

I could even overlook it if a guy did not meet criteria number seven, as long as he has numbers one through six, and as long as he`s not TOO repulsive. I never cared what a guy looked like, but I used to prefer men freshly showered and without bad breath -- I`m no longer very picky, however.

Hub`s hygiene is excellent - he is extremely well-groomed and well-kept, and he never seems to sweat. And though we are not well-matched in many ways, he can still make me laugh. It`s hard to make me really laugh, and men who do it can pretty much have their way with me -- I fall in love with them immediately. But --- I`m married to Hub, and I want to stay that way, so all I`ll do is laugh. And then I try to fix them up with my single friends....

Poor Hub.

Hub doesn`t understand how I can be 1) terribly missing my old life in Tokyo, 2) enjoying our new life, 3) missing our cozy apartment in Tokyo, 4) enjoying the lovely house we`re now renting, 5) saving up money to take the kids back to Japan next to summer to visit all our friends, and 6) telling Hub I might not go back to Tokyo right away, when he gets transferred back there in a few years, if the kids want to stay in school here. I managed to get all of these points into the same brief conversation.

"You hate it here, you love it here, you hate it here, you love it here, you want to go back there, and you want to stay here -- ALL of these can`t be true!" he says.

But oh, yes they CAN BE! And they ARE!

Is it just me, or can some men just not multi-task at all, even in routine thinking?

Poor Hub.

Latae sententiae

Several friends have asked me why we send our kids to a Catholic school, when I am a pretty sorry-ass excuse of a Catholic and my husband is not Catholic at all.

Most of them know we were raising our kids with Hub`s Buddhist/Shinto traditions, so their first question is, "They let you in? But the kids aren`t baptized." I explain that you don`t have to be Catholic to go to Catholic school nowadays, and also that I did in fact end up getting the kids baptized (on Halloween last year. They wanted to wear their Halloween costumes, but I wouldn`t let them -- wouldn`t that have been fun, though?)

Once I tell them our kids were baptized, there`s always a dramatic pause, in which they wonder if I had some sort of great religious awakening, and they worry that I am about to start quoting scripture to them and think that perhaps they should start slowly backing away. I usually jump right in with the story of Big Son`s friend`s death at that point (see sad post from two days ago).

Devout Catholics have lots of words for people like me -- "cafeteria Catholics," "lapsed Catholics," and my favorite of all, "excommunicated Catholics." See, not only am I not pro-life, I also just don`t get the whole anti-gay thing -- if any two consenting adults want to get married, it`s A-OK with me. And then there`s the overarching heresy of marrying outside the faith and giving my husband`s non-Christian religion top billing in our household for almost a decade. That`s the sin that earned me the "excommunicated" label, because I was refused communion at my own wedding.

The reason we were married in a Catholic church at all was because my grandmother was still alive then. My maternal grandmother lived with my parents from the time I was five, and I was very close to her. Hub really liked her and wanted to make her happy, which I thought was a sweet and touching gesture on his part. (Hub did all the wedding planning, bless his heart.)

Oddly, the priest who married us wasn`t at all concerned about performing a wedding without a mass for a fallen Catholic and the heathen who led her astray -- we were in Japan, and the only reason this tiny church stayed in business in that heathen land was by charging money (about $1,500) to hold weddings there. We got a slight "member`s discount" ( I think we paid $1,200) because I was able to produce a baptismal certificate, and I guess even a heretical Catholic marrying a heathen qualified as a member. My mother was so horrified at the idea of a church charging big bucks for weddings that she wrote to the Vatican, and someone there actually wrote her back, and said churches were allowed to follow local customs on such matters. This makes sense, because the Japanese Buddhist/Shinto custom is to charge a big pile of money for everything.

The priest, who was a dead ringer for Colonel Sanders of fried chicken fame, was Mexican. Neither I nor Hub spoke any Spanish, so we communicated with him in Japanese with a few English words thrown in. The Colonel was very jolly, and laughed as he raised his arms for emphasis, crossed at the wrists in a big "X," as he said, "Mass, NO! Communion, NO! Ha, ha ha!" I didn`t ask him whether this meant no communion just at the wedding, or no communion EVER, until I repented for marrying a heathen who wouldn`t promise our children would be Catholic. For one thing, I wasn`t confident I knew how to ask all that in coherent Japanese, and for another, I didn`t really care, since I hadn`t been to church regularly in years and didn`t plan to ever start going again.

Anyway, I had stopped receiving communion ten years before, when I was 15 and decided I wasn`t against abortion 100% of the time, as the church requires. To be honest, I hadn`t given the whole abortion issue much thought before the age of 15 -- I just figured, babies are cute and killing them is bad, the way clubbing baby seals is bad, or shooting Bambi`s mother. I might have been able to sustain this simple attitude indefinitely, except one night our church showed our Catechism class "Silent Scream," and another pro-life production whose name I now forget, that was not destined to become as big a hit. "Silent Scream" made no lasting impression on me, but the other movie did -- I think it consisted entirely of still photos of bloody, mutilated late-term aborted fetuses, and a few of the more dramatic hypochondiacs ran out of the room to vomit.

My first thoughts, after the abortion issue in all its bloody glory was shoved in front of my naive 15-year old face, was:

1) Abortions are horrible and gross, and I don`t ever want to have one.

2) Horrible and gross as abortions are, I would have one if I were raped.

I truly had never considered the possibility of facing a crisis pregnancy until I saw those movies. But as I watched picture after bloody picture, some of the fetuses posed next to crucifixes, I asked myself, what kind of circumstances led women to decide to do this? I started thinking not just of these sad critters who didn`t get to be born, but of the women in whose bodies they had been growing. What was their story? Why weren`t they in this movie? They seemed like a big piece to leave out.

I tried to imagine circumstances in which I do such a thing -- and I realized then at that moment, if I were raped, I would not have a baby. And if my Catholic parents tried to force me to, I would.... well, that`s where my imagination failed, because I was definitely never a suicidal teenager. I supposed I would try to claw it out of my body with some sharp object.... my mind reeled with the horrible possibilities.

For the record, I was not a sexually active 15 year old, for the simple reason that my teenage hormones hadn`t yet awakened to the point where I was even vaguely interested in boys (or girls - girls were not my thing, anyway). I wouldn`t have minded dating a popular boy strictly for the status, but the few boring boys who had expressed any interest in me were rebuffed -- it wasn`t worth the trouble. While many of my friends were casting their virginity to the wind, I was home watching TV with my grandmother most Saturday nights, when I wasn`t at the library.

The only pregnancy I could imagine for myself at that point was one resulting from sex to which I had not consented, which seemed like a very real possibility at the time. I don`t mean assault by some stranger -- instead, I imagined falling prey to some of the very Catholic boys who were sitting there watching the pro-life movies with me. I had been unwillingly groped by one of them once, and I had a few friends who were date-raped by others. I imagined one of these wild-eyed hormonal boys catching me alone somewhere, overpowering me, and then a "he said, she said" confrontation in which no one believed my story -- least of all my own parents, who would have sent me off to some Catholic birth home with bars on the window.

After the movie ended, our parish priest told the assembled teenagers that anyone who every had an abortion, or procured one, was automatically excommunicated, latae sententiae, one strike and you`re out, unless you repent. He said, "Unless you`re pro-life, and oppose all killing from the moment of conception in all circumstances, YOU ARE EXCOMMUNICATED!"

Catholics believe that the intention to commit a sin is morally equivalent to the sin itself -- remember the old George Carlin routine? "If you woke up in the morning, and you said, `I'm going down to 42nd street to commit a mortal sin,` save your car fare -- you did it, man!" Therefore, I reasoned, my realization that I was NOT pro-life, and that I WOULD terminate a pregnancy if I had one forced on me, meant that I was excommunicated, latae sententiae. I was possibly the only virginal Catholic girl in history to decide I could no longer call myself a member of the church after viewing a couple of pro-life films. This was probably not what their producers had in mind.

So I went home, and let my grandmother know I was excommunicated. She asked me why, and I told her.

"Oh Lisa, " she said, as she rustled through her TV guide, "why are you thinking about these things? No one will rape you -- you`re a good girl."

I said I was not pro-life, and therefore was not Catholic anymore.

She sighed and said, "It`s not that easy. You can leave the church, but the church will never leave you."

I remembered that conversation last year when we had our kids baptized, nearly a quarter century later. I wish she had lived long enough for me to let her know, she was right.

It`s not that easy.

Nothing to cry about in this post, I promise.

I vow to alternate serious posts with fun, frivolous posts, so this site doesn`t get a rep as a tearjerker mommy blog. I had originally planned to follow up my last post with some thoughts about what it`s like to be raising my kids Catholic after so many years away from the church, but instead, I went to Target and bought some candy corn.

It was $1.99 for a 25-ounce bag. In Tokyo, I wanted so desperately to share with my kids (note word choice: "share with," not "give to") the taste of American Halloween that I went to the foreign supermarket and paid the equivalent of FOUR DOLLARS for a TEENY TINY bag of candy corn -- such a small portion that we had to dole it out, corn by corn. (Sometimes I would also pay six dollars for a bag of goldfish crackers, but drew the line at the four-dollar can of Spaghetti-O`s. Some things are sacred, some are not.)

Considering that Tokyo is the capital of a G-7 country, it`s amazingly hard to get good stuff there. You can certainly get everything you need, and most things you want, but not easily.

Say, for instance, that you decide to cook your Hub some mashed potatoes, and you realize you don`t have a potato masher because you are in the Land of Rice.

First, you check out the local supermarket where you do your main shopping, and there`s not a masher in sight. Then you hit the Y100 store (equivalent to the dollar store) and you score with some cool dish towels, but no mashers. Then you check out the trendy imported goods supermarket, succumb to the six dollar goldfish crackers, and find a really ugly potato masher for twenty-five bucks. But you just can`t bring yourself to pay that much for something so ugly, so you wait until some weekend you have some free time to go to another part of town, and you go into a few different department stores. You find one for fifteen bucks, but it`s a cheap piece of crap that looks as if it will fall apart soon, so again, you can`t bring yourself to buy it. You just keep mashing your potatoes with a fork, and add "potato masher" to the endless list of stuff you will buy the next time you go to America. And then, at long last, you go back to America and go into Target and drop to your knees in gratitude and kiss the linoleum tiles, because there before your eyes you have 17 different kinds of potato mashers, and you buy one so goddamn beautiful you want to put it in on a pedastal in your kitchen and call it ART! And everything there is so cheap that you also buy a set of measuring cups, and a Michael Graves garlic press, and and and andandandand..... I would come close to hyperventilating. I fully understand why America has a record trade deficit with China, where all this stuff is made by factory workers who can`t afford to buy any of it for themselves.

When I lived in Tokyo, I only came back once a year at most, and sometimes even less, so I set myself up for some serious consumer culture shock. I would walk into Target, and just cower in awe. "This store is so....BIG. And they sell....EVERYTHING....at prices even I CAN TOTALLY AFFORD! WAAAAAHHHH!" And I would literally tremble as I maneuvered a shopping cart as big as some Japanese cars.

Whenever I hear people around me now complaining about how expensive San Francisco is, I nod sympathetically, but I have no idea what the hell they`re talking about.

A long post about something sad that changed our family forever in ways that I am just beginning to fully comprehend

I`m filling out the paperwork now for the free counseling services offered at my big kids` school, for Big Son. I figure, it can`t hurt -- if he hates it, we can simply stop it. I don`t want his anger to turn into aggression, or his frustration to turn into defeat, so it seems worth trying.

I also want to give him the chance to talk about something else, something potentially far worse than changing schools and countries. At the end of June, 2004, a little friend of his suddenly died.

He hadn`t been close to this boy for very long. Our local Tokyo public school merged with another nearby school last year (due to dropping enrollment - there aren`t many kids left in central Tokyo) at the beginning of the Japanese school year in April. There were only four kids in his class at the old school, which was great -- for two years, it was like having a private tutor, but I had to admit, it wasn`t a very efficient use of tax money. After that school closed, his whole class simply moved to the new school a few blocks away, so it wasn`t a big transition. He just had to walk further, and had to get used to being in a class of 18 kids instead of four.

At the new school, he instantly bonded with Nobu, who was a quiet, sweet kind of kid. Every day Big Son came home and told me about all the things they did together at recess, jokes and stories they`d shared, books they were reading, etc. Big Son found a couple of big garden snails, and he and Nobu were keeping them in the classroom and taking care of them together, carefully consulting a book the teacher gave them about snails.

Three months passed this way. One day, Big Son told me that Nobu got a fever at school, and went home. "He was outside in the hot sun, and he got so hot so he had to lie down on the ground," Big Son said.

That was Thursday -- on Saturday, one of the neighborhood mothers whispered to me that Nobu was in the hospital. His mother had put him to bed Thursday night, and called an ambulance when she couldn`t wake him up Friday morning. But it was too late -- he had encephalitis, the damage was already done, and the doctors thought he was probably brain-dead.

Our first worry was for our own kids. There is a mosquito-bourne disease called Japanese encephalitis, but there hasn`t been a case of it in Tokyo in a very long time. The school assured parents that Nobu`s illness was not believed to be highly contagious, and that the doctors all thought it was likely a rare complication of an ordinarily less serious virus. Of course, the moms still panicked, as all good moms do, and we carefully monitored our children`s every ache, pain, cough and sigh.

On Monday, my son came home from school with the snails in a plastic container. "I want to take care of them myself until Nobu gets out of the hospital," he said. I knew then that we were stuck with these snails for a while, and that the school obviously hadn`t shared Nobu`s grim prognosis with the other kids.

Big Son then sat down and started making paper origami cranes for Nobu. This is what you do in Japan when someone is seriously ill, because a little atomic bomb survivor in Hiroshima who was dying of A bomb-related leukemia attempted to fold a thousand cranes, in the hope it would make her better. It didn`t, and I have mixed opinions of this custom -- I have never known anyone who had cranes made for them who survived, and if I am ever seriously ill and someone makes paper cranes for me, I am going to assume I am a goner and give up the ghost right on the spot.

Nobu did not live to get his cranes. I didn`t know his parents well enough to get the story straight from them, but I heard they chose to unhook him from life support. Less than a week after Big Son had described to me his friend going home from school sick, I was accompanying Big Son to Nobu`s wake.

Is a wake even what you call it? I don`t remember the proper Buddhist word. It was a hot humid summer evening, and I remember worrying that I went bare-legged instead of wearing black stockings with my black suit like all the other mothers, and that some grieving relative was going to be horrified by my apparent lack of respect. For this same reason, I was terrified of doing something wrong -- I made my Japanese friends explain to me again and again just how to put the incense on the embers three times, and bow and pray. Odd, how I vividly recall my piddly insecurities and remember little of the wake itself.

Nobu`s parents` pain must have been unimaginable -- he was an only child, eight and a half years old. Nearly the whole school turned out, and waited patiently in line to pay their respects to his family and burn incense for Nobu, and look at the photos of him his family had arranged. At the end, under some awnings near the exit, guests wrote their names and addresses in the condolence book.

One heartbreaking detail stands out -- because this was a child`s wake and lots of kids would be attending, someone had set up a big bowl of candy for them on the way out... and most of them had to be coaxed to take some, because all but the littlest ones were crying and didn`t want any.
I managed not to cry myself (I`m ordinarily not much of a weeper), but I remember when we got home, there was some junk mail in our box about some kids` summer homestudy program, that you could sign your kid up to get "Happy Summer Vacation Studying Fun!" and I realized that Nobu`s parents were probably on the same junk mailing lists, and would come home from the funeral later and get the same junk in their box, and that Nobu wasn`t going to have any "Happy Summer Vacation Studying Fun" because he was dead. This made me cry, and it`s making me cry again to just write about it now.

I didn`t go to the funeral the next day, but I wish I had, when I heard about it later, if only to give Big Son some moral support and comfort. I didn`t think the actual dead body would be displayed, but it was -- Nobu`s classmates were asked to go up to it, one by one, and put flowers in his casket with him. The body hadn`t been on display at the wake, just a photo, and some of the mothers who went to the funeral told me that the expression on the dead boy`s face didn`t look peaceful at all -- Nobu had obviously died after considerable medical trauma. Big Son told me only that Nobu "looked scary" and didn`t want to talk about it.

In fact, Big Son didn`t want to talk about anything at all. He got very quiet, and didn`t laugh or smile for many weeks.

He did get very obsessive about feeding and watering Nobu`s snails, and I feared how he might react if one of them passed away of natural causes. So with great fanfare, we released them in our favorite nature park when we went to visit my husband`s parents for our summer vacation. My in-laws were a bit perplexed that we had really carried a slime-slicked container of garden snails for several hours on the train, but it seemed like a simple gesture worth doing.

Two months later, Big Son told me that he wanted to "pray for Nobu, to help me remember him." I figured this was a healthy sign that he was beginning to let go of his grief. We did this at home at first, and once he said, "God, please be friends with Nobu, " because he was worried that Nobu wouldn`t know anyone in heaven, and wouldn`t have any friends up there yet.

Then Big Son said he wanted to pray not at home but at the Buddhist temple, or maybe at Nobu`s grave. I understood this -- he wanted to put his mourning in some formal context, to give it a place in his life.

But I had no idea where Nobu`s grave was, and I`m not a Buddhist,so I have no idea what to do at a temple except take photos of the architecture. I lived in Japan for most of my adult life and have visited thousands of Buddhist temples, and it still seems strange to me to see people splashing large ladles into the water outside instead of just dipping their fingertips in it and making the sign of the cross.

As you can probably guess from our choice of school, I was raised Catholic, but at that time I hadn`t set foot inside a church since I had married my Buddhist husband 13 years earlier. However, I was thoroughly comfortable and familiar with Catholic customs and rituals, and I knew I could take Big Son to the Franciscan Chapel in Tokyo without saying the wrong thing, walking in the wrong place or inadvertently doing something unacceptable with the holy water.

This is why I started taking the kids to mass, and signed the older two up for religious education, and ended up getting all three baptized despite Hub`s reservations, and against my marital promise to let him raise his kids as Buddhists. Hey, I gave Hub his chance -- but he wasn`t the one dealing with Big Son`s grief, so I did it my way.

Hub was transferred to San Francisco in March, but the kids and I stayed a few months longer so that Big Son could attend Nobu`s one-year death anniversary ceremony with his class, which he really wanted to do.

I hope that someday I can write a happy ending to this sad post. Big Son still doesn`t want to talk about Nobu`s death, and I don`t force him -- I let him bring it up himself, which he does from time to time. At least he started smiling again.

All I can say is that Big Son`s current adjustment problems at his new school pale compared to what he was going through last year, and if he could get through that, he can get through this.

False Alarm

I just picked up my big kids from school, and the head administrator said to me in a serious hushed voice, "Did you hear about the 6.5 earthquake in Tokyo?"

My heart stopped beating for a second, as that feeling of cold electric shock passed through my body. When I could breathe again, I asked her if she knew anymore, and she said, no, she had just seen it on the news in the morning on her way out the door.

I wondered, how did I miss it? I don`t watch much TV, but I read NYTimes.com and MarketWatch.com every day, usually quite compulsively. How did I fail to see headlines about a major earthquake?

Another school administrator who happened to be in the office said, "Good thing your husband and kids are over here now! Oh, but you have an apartment there, don`t you?"

I blurted out, "I don`t care about the apartment! I care about all of our friends!" How could these people be so CALM? Great, so my own family is safe, but the entire context of our life was crumbling before my mind`s eye.

Of course I realized why I hadn`t noticed a headline -- there wasn`t any. The earthquake was a 6.2 off the coast of Ibaraki, and it shook buildings in Tokyo as quakes do all the time.

So now I have that sensation that you get when you wake up from a bad dream about something awful happening -- like your house burning down or your kid, spouse or close friend dying -- and you wake up with that feeling of grateful relief and think, "Oh, thank God it was just a dream!"

But in the back of your mind, you know that next time could be the real thing.....

Getting with the program

The following conversation shows that Daughter IS paying attention in religion class at her Catholic school:

Daughter: "(Big Son) won`t be with us forever."

Me: "Huh?"

Daughter: "He`s a bad boy. He`ll go to Jikoku but the rest of us will be in Tengoku."

She doesn`t know the English words yet for "Hell" and "Heaven," but she`s already applying abstract concepts to her daily life...... and has decided that her big brother is eternally damned.

Impressive, after just a couple of months.

Hub (a practicing Buddhist, leery of the whole Catholic school idea): "If she becomes a nun and we don`t get any grandchildren out of her, remember, it`s ALL YOUR FAULT!"

Sleeping With the Enemy, File #1

Hub spent three hours on the computer yesterday, and apparently didn`t read my blog, or he would have mentioned what I wrote about him yesterday. Cool - that means I can write more about him.

I have a lot of non-Japanese friends miserably married to Japanese men and women -- some happy ones, too, but as we all know, all happy families are happy in the same way and therefore usually boring, while unhappy families are the fodder for GREAT stories.

Without revealing where I rate on the happiness scale (just in case), I figure that as a public service for anyone thinking of marrying a Japanese person, I should start writing about what it can be like.

FILE NUMBER ONE: MOST JAPANESE PEOPLE CAN COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY WITHOUT TALKING AT ALL, AND THINK EVERYONE ELSE CAN DO THIS, TOO.

Most Japanese people appear to be born with the ability to communicate nonverbally with their own kind, through gestures and expressions. My personal theory is that telepathy also plays a role, and that this skill evolved over the centuries -- nature gave them a way to avoid making sounds, thereby keeping the noise level down on their small island. When a whole country can take it for granted that they always know what the people around them are thinking, this makes for a very peaceful, stable society.

But problems arise when ignorant outsiders fail to understand these clear nonverbal cues.

Case in point: I ask Hub, "Would you like me to make more coffee?"

Hub looks wounded. He says, "Of COURSE. That`s why I left my cup near the coffee pot instead of putting it in the sink." He was also probably sending me very clear "MORE COFFEE" vibes, but I was failing to pick them up.

So I wonder, what is he trying to say to me when he leaves his dirty cup on the table when he`s done, and walks away? Or is the meaning of that universal?

Adventures in Real Estate and Public Relations

My son`s team won their soccer game. My status as a soccer mom is rising.

Since I have yet to determine whether or not Hub reads my blog, I have to be somewhat circumspect when I talk about him on a day to day basis. I`m now going to tell you a story he doesn`t like me to tell, but you`ll see why he has no right to complain.

Eleven months ago, after over a year of searching and three unsuccessful attempts on other properties, we bought our very first home: a three bedroom apartment in central Tokyo, just a few blocks away from the place we had been renting for six years. The location is perfect -- it is up a hill on a quiet street, overlooking trees, near parks, shops and the kids` school, daycare and friends. And even if they build a 40-story office tower next to it and destroy our view (this is Tokyo, remember), the building itself is very nice, and it will still be a cozy, convenient place to live. We had no trouble finding a tenant for it while we`re overseas -- some banker is renting it, and I`m hoping that he`s having wild parties and trashing it so that we can keep his security deposit and redo the floors.

As I said, I was very active in our neighborhood, which was a little pocket of ordinary people in ordinary houses, surrounded by modern Tokyo`s glitz, glamor and office towers. Remember that children`s book, "The Little House," about the house in the countryside that is gradually engulfed by development? Our neighborhood always reminded me of that. Most of it was bombed flat in World War II, and many of the people who rebuilt it are still living there. I knew most of the shopkeepers and families, participated in all the festivals, and went to planning and fundraising meetings all the time.

So Hub said, "Please do not tell anyone how much we paid for our place, okay?" I said fine, whatever, and didn`t think anyone would ask, anyway.

A few weeks later Hub had lunch with a friend of a friend of mine, a Wall St. Journal reporter writing about the end of deflation in Japan, who wanted to interview someone who had just bought a house.

You can guess what`s coming. Hub ended up in the lead of this reporter`s story, which made the front page of the Asian, European and U.S. editions -- and included how much we paid. I got emails from friends I hadn`t heard from in years, saying, "Hey, we heard you bought a place!"

But as far as I know, none of our Japanese neighbors read it, so Hub`s secret is safe. He only managed to broadcast it to everyone in the Western world.

(Addendum: The WSJ wanted to make one of those dot drawings of him to accompany the article. Did you know, those drawings are still made by hand, not computers? But he declined, which is too bad, because unless you`re a CEO, chances like that don`t come around twice.)

Black Hole!

I just republished the post that disappeared -- let`s hope it stays put. Considering my last job was at an Internet news service, I am embarrassingly useless when it comes to troubleshooting tech problems.

Apologies to all of the people I haven`t blogrolled yet, because I still haven`t taken the time to figure out how to do it.

Black hole?

One of my posts just disappeared. Should I be worried about this? It was the one that mentioned nuns -- perhaps the Vatican`s software spies hacked in and deleted it?

Apologies for the last super-long post -- I will try not to do that ever again.
Off to Big Son`s soccer game now -- so far, his team is undefeated. This means I`m a highly successful soccer mom, right?

Some Background Essential for Understanding Our Family

(NOTE: I am editing this post to remove the school`s derogatory nickname. I have replaced it with its real name.)

People often ask us why we selected our older kids` school. Before I can answer that, I have to get quite a lot of background out of the way.

Many of our friends know nothing about the public school situation in San Francisco. There are some truly wonderful public schools here, but depending on the luck of the draw, you have a better chance of getting your cocker spaniel into Harvard than getting your kids into one. (Note to my UK-based readers: by "public," I mean what you call "state" schools.)

There are also some truly wonderful private schools. We certainly could have afforded one of these if I had continued working fulltime as planned, but we were inclined to consider public schools first, for reasons other than money. Hub and I are both products of the public school systems in our respective hometowns, and Big Son and Daughter both attended public schools in Tokyo.

Also, the amount of money one pays for a school does not directly correlate to whether it will be the right school for your child and your whole family. We know this from our experience with Nishimachi International School in Tokyo, where Big Son attended kindergarten and first grade. Years ago, it was known as the scrappy, creative, progressive school, but its progressive outlook appeared to fade away after its founder died, and it is now best known for its academic rigor. We knew many families who thought the school`s rigors were a plus, but we did not keep in touch with these families.

To be sure, this was all several years ago, and many of the teachers, staff and parents at Nishimachi have moved on. The old adage that you can`t step into the same river twice is also true of schools, so I have no doubt it is a very different place, and perhaps a kindler and gentler place -- but probably not a more socio-economically diverse place, and therein lay part of the problem for our family.

To say that we were not major donors was an understatement -- to say that we had much less free time and spare money than most families there was also an understatement. Why they ever accepted our Big Son in the first place remains a mystery to us -- we knew many more beautiful, smarter families with piles of money and stay-at-home moms with scads of free time to volunteer, who were inexplicably rejected that year. Perhaps due to a clerical error, the rejection letter we were meant to receive was sent to the wrong family by mistake. In any case, we were overjoyed that Big Son was accepted into one of the oldest, most prestigious private elementary schools in Tokyo, and my employer at the time was going to foot the entire outrageous tuiton bill.

But our core problem had nothing to do with money, or that fact that I was one of the few working mothers in the kindergarten class (more on the working mother issue some other day). We went lurching off on the wrong foot mainly because Big Son was one of the worst behaved kindergarteners in Nishimachi history. One of the administrators actually said that to me, in those very words. What was I supposed to say to that? "Awwwwright! That`s my boy! We told him that if he can`t be the best, then by golly, he should excel at being the worst! "

Our then 5-year old Big Son did not understand why he had to suddenly trade his wonderful carefree Japanese public daycare center for an intense academic program that allowed no time to catch his breath. Instead of playing, he had to sit still for long periods of time and do worksheets and listen to the teacher. He did not like this one bit, and wasted valuable learning time hiding under tables and chairs and screaming, and kicking whoever tried to remove him.

One of his teachers even called his former daycare center, to ask how they controlled such a problem child, and the head teacher there, bless her heart, told them she had no idea what the hell they were talking about. One Nishimachi staff member strongly suggested I "look into medication." I told the school I would seek outside help, and brought my son to a family counselor in Tokyo. After a few sessions, she gently pointed out that if all of his problems truly did begin when he started at the school, then perhaps it was not my son but the school, and that maybe it was just not the right place for him? (It was a noble honest gesture on her part, equivalent to biting the hand that fed her, considering how many referrals she got from parents of other kids having problems at the school.)

No, I would not consider that this was the wrong school for him. He loved his new friends, he was keeping up with the schoolwork despite his outbursts, and we were thrilled that within a few months he was already reading. He would just have to tough it out, and get with the program. Eventually, he did -- kindergarten got smoother, and first grade was even better. He had a strict male teacher he absolutely adored. (In fact, my son wasn`t the only one who adored this male teacher -- if you ever read this blog, Mr. G., I want you to know that lots of the moms thought you were really hot!) The only sign that something might be wrong was that Big Son was starting to complain of headaches, but we figured he was just malingering a bit.

Then he got his first full-blown migraine. A neurologist assured us that they were "classic" childhood migraines, and that he would probably just outgrow them, but they were just horrible... anyone who has ever seen a small child in the grip of blinding pain knows what I`m talking about. We knew that migraines could be triggered by stress, and yet... he seemed to be doing fine at school, where he had many friends, was getting good grades and appeared outwardly happy.

Who knows how long we would have kept Big Son there, if the unthinkable hadn`t happened: Daughter was one of the rare siblings of a Nishimachi student to be rejected for kindergarten. It was not unprecedented, though, and we should have seen it coming. We had hoped that Big Son`s gradual transformation into a good student would have erased the memories of those first terrible months, but no. At our interview, we were asked lots of questions about how we were going to prevent Daughter from a similar transition, "since she, afterall, would also be coming straight from (pause here to sneer....) Tokyo public daaaaaaaycaaaaaaare."

Daughter, to her credit, knew right away the school wasn`t for her. She marched out of her own interview and declared to us, "I don`t want to come here. I didn`t like those kids or those teachers, so I wouldn`t talk to them." The school, to its credit, gave Daughter another chance and asked us to come back for a second interview, because they said she truly did not open her mouth at all and they couldn`t evaluate her.

We also made a mistake on our application, when we wrote "equal proficiency" for her Japanese and English. Considering she had been immersed in fulltime Japanese daycare since she was 2, English was her much weaker language. We figured they would test both, but since Nishimachi`s main language of instruction is English, they didn`t speak to her in her stronger language at all. Their two main reasons for rejecting her were (1) her English deficiencies, and (2) her "too passive" personality.

My Daughter, passive? Passive-aggressive, maybe, but passive --- never! And I couldn`t help but wonder what "passive" was a code word for -- slow-witted? Dull? Insufficiently competitive?

One of the school staff members later said to me that since the child`s mother tongue is always his or her mother`s native tongue, the fact that Daughter`s English was lagging "shows that you are not raising your own child." (Stop here... deep breath, let anger go....I`m tempted to start namecalling here, but will try to be civil.) After that, it was a pretty easy decision to take Big Son out, too, at the end of the school year, and switch him to our local public school where he already had friends from our neighborhood. Daughter never went to any kindergarten at all -- she spent another year at her wonderful public daycare center, and then joined her brother up the street for first grade at the public school.

We did deliberate just a bit before pulling Big Son out. He seemed to be doing fine, and we could have left him at Nishimachi, which, as I said, was fully paid for by my employer. Some friends told me I was selfishly letting my own problems with the school take precedence over what was best for my son, and I nagged myself to no end about this, because I knew that once we withdrew him, his place would be filled in a nanosecond and he could never go back.

What can I say, except I wasted lots of perfectly good angst. Pulling Big Son out of that school and putting him in a Tokyo public school was the best thing we ever did for him. We thought he was doing well before, but suddenly it was as if a million lightbulbs flicked on in his head. He blossomed, he shone, he excelled and... he stopped getting headaches. He still gets one sometimes when he`s coming down with a fever, but the frequency and intensity just don`t compare.

In Big Son`s last few weeks at Nishimachi, I found that whenever I told other parents, teachers, or administrators about our decision to leave, every single one of them said exactly the same thing. (Perhaps this proper standard response was in some handbook they never gave us?) They all nodded and said, "Nishimachi is not for everyone." The implication was, "Nishimachi is clearly not for YOU."

And you know what? They were right -- it was NOT for us. Thank God we realized it in time.

Rules of Conduct

I`ve gotten a lot of feedback on my blog already, from various friends, and remarkably, most of them say the same thing -- "Lisa, you have WAY too much free time on your hands."

Others have expressed concern that they will start making guest appearances in my blog. Fear not -- I will extend the same courtesy to you that I extend to Hub. I will never include anyone`s name, or excerpts from any communication, unless given explicit permission. I will hold my blog to the same journalistic standards I held my news articles -- everything is off the record unless it is mutually understood to be otherwise.

However, I will write about real people and places, especially those in my daily life. I will not say anything about anyone on my blog that I would not say to that person`s face. (My longtime friends know exactly what I`m capable of saying to people`s faces, and are now laughing their asses off about my claiming any moral high ground there.)

To be sure, my blog posts are not news stories, by any means. I often use profanity in real life in certain situations, and I imagine I will be using it a lot here as well. I have taken the name of the Lord in vain on a regular basis ever since I was in second grade, and a friend of mine reasoned that "goddamn" was okay and respectful, because it was just asking God to damn something for you, and this made perfect sense to me. I use the word "fuck" both as an expletive and a verb -- the same with "shit," although the noun form of the latter is usually "poop," ever since we had kids and it suddenly became a hot topic of conversation in our house. Overall, it is hard to offend me but I`ve always found it very easy to offend others -- but I figure anyone looking for good, clean wholesome amusement wouldn`t be reading a blog about my particular family.

If anyone wants publicity, and is wondering how to get me to write about you on my blog, I will also hold you to the same journalistic standards I held my news articles. Be very, very interesting --- and being really, really nice to me wouldn`t hurt, either, though I can`t promise anything. Also, as far as I know, the Blog Code of Ethics allows me to accept gifts as well, including cash. You have my email address -- all you have to do is open a PayPal account, and send me a little something with your press release, and I`m sorry in advance if I still forget to write it up.

Nunsense

Yesterday, when I went to pick up my older kids, Big Son`s Main Nun (his homeroom teacher, who teaches him most subjects) told me he had a great day in school, and his classmates even clapped after he read a difficult paragraph aloud. Main Nun has been on my son`s side since day one, when he made a really fortuitous mistake on a class assignment -- he got his "L" and "R"" mixed up, no doubt due to his Japanese background, and wrote, "I like to pray."

But no sooner than she was done talking with me, I was cornered by the dreaded Social Studies Nun. We have fallen behind in our Social Studies homework! (I say "we," because Big Son can`t yet do it on his own. I pity him, I really do -- how is he supposed to learn study habits from ME, of all people? I saved all my homework for the last minute, and in fact, I made this my lifelong philosophy. I really put the DEAD in deadline -- good work habits be damned, because I do all of my best writing under the gun, and have always been able to earn a decent living doing it this way.)

My older kids` school has ample experience mainstreaming kids who speak little English, and has reading tutors. But Big Son has a disadvantage -- his spoken English is perfect, even articulate, because he went to kindergarten and first grade at a ritzy private prison camp in Tokyo, and he got a very good academic foundation in English there before switching to Japanese public schools. (He also got migraines there, but that`s another story for another day.) I think his teachers at his new school would be inclined to cut him more slack if he made the occasional little mistakes his sister makes, constant reminders that she is From Another Land.

His reading, too, is basically okay, just not yet where it should be, so again, his teachers are disinclined to cut him any slack. On one hand, this is great, because Big Son inherited his Mama`s weasel genes, and if you give him an inch, he will attempt to slack a mile. On the other hand, it sometimes gets to the point where he wants to just give up in frustration, and he has developed an attitude problem the size of Montana.

Social Studies Nun seemed to think that sending him back to fourth grade might be the answer, which seems like a great way to make big problems into gargantuan problems. Hey, forget about those first tentative friendships he`s made in the first month and a half of school -- just send him into another classroom, where he will always be known as that Big Kid Who Couldn`t Handle Fifth Grade.

I have already spoken to the principal, who understands that Big Son is struggling to do fifth-grade level work at only a first- or second- grade reading skill level. The principal has found a high school boy willing to help tutor him, which will start next month and should get rid of a few of our homework torture sessions and help Mama cut down on her wine consumption. I told the principal that I don`t really care what kind of grades my kids bring home, as long as they show improvement, because as far as I`m concerned, this entire year is pass/fail in my book.

So why is Social Studies Nun still fretting that he`s behind in her class? I have no idea, but I nodded patiently and agreed with everything she said, the gist of which went, "How will he ever be ready for sixth grade Social Studies lessons when he doesn`t understand the fifth grade Social Studies lessons?" Right now, sixth grade seems as far away as high school, but she agreed that Big Son could perhaps start doing fourth grade social studies lessons instead -- but as homework, so the other boys wouldn`t find out and tease him for it. I especially liked that part.

Daughter`s teacher is not a nun. Daughter`s teacher is a woman so patient and kind that one of the school administrators said to me that in her two decades at the school, she`s never raised her voice. "Even when she thinks she`s yelling, she`s not really yelling," I was told.

This is the Zen opposite of our homelife, where Hub and I always seem to be yelling even when we think we`re speaking in normal voices. Isn`t that amazing? Go figure.

Homework time! Please pass the corkscrew.

I am about to help Big Son with his homework. He is going to tell me he doesn`t understand it and can`t do it because he`s too stupid and can`t read English. I am going to clench my teeth into something that I hope resembles a smile, and constantly reassure him that he CAN do, that he`s NOT stupid, that he can do ANYTHING if he would only just TRY! We will repeat this ritual in approximately 3 minute cycles, and it will take us an hour and a half to finish one Social Studies worksheet.

The only way I seem to be able to get through this without screaming is by drinking wine. Does anyone wonder why I`m not homeschooling?

Today, Little Son came home with some drawings he made at preschool, and one is a drawing entitled "Ed, Edd, Eddie," that awful Cartoon Network show that lots of moms I know don`t let their kids watch.

No, he didn`t write the title himself -- he`s 3, and he`s no prodigy. His preschool teacher wrote the title. This means that his preschool teacher now knows I let him watch "Ed, Edd, Eddie."

I am SO busted....

Au pair extraordinaire

I was describing my Little Son`s preschool to a friend, and telling her that I felt a bit out of place there. Don`t get me wrong -- it`s a fantastic place, and he loves it, and without exception, all of the parents and teachers have been really friendly and kind.

The preschool is just a few blocks away, and as I said, the reason he ended up there is because I happened to walk by and check it out the day they had a cancellation. Many people have told me we were very lucky to get him in like that. It offers only half-day programs, either morning or afternoon sessions, with no additional childcare available, and is closed during the summer, so it is strictly a child development center, and not daycare. A lot of the kids` mothers appear to stay home fulltime, and others work part-time. There are probably some who work fulltime, too, but I haven`t encountered any of them yet.

I was telling my friend that I was worried I would have trouble relating to some of the other moms I`d met, who seem to live in a different world. They stay at home fulltime in expensive houses in nice San Francisco neighborhoods, and are still able to afford to send their older kids to private schools, and also have fulltime household help. My friend said, "Uh, Lisa? You just described yourself."

You know, she`s technically right. I`m at home now, we do pay for the older two kids` school, and we have an au pair.

For me, though, this is a very temporary state, and not a sustainable way of life. Besides, I don`t consider our local parochial school to be in the same league as some of the more expensive and exclusive private schools in this city, and don`t consider our au pair to be fulltime household help -- she`s a homestay student who lends a much-appreciated hand, but isn`t a pro. She is here to study English, and in order to meet her special visa requirements, she has to take 6 credit hours of either ESL or American cultural studies-related courses at a local school.

I am the kind of person who generally hates to spend money when I don`t have to -- so how did we come to have this au pair, even though I am not working? Excellent question. I originally planned to transfer with my previous employer and work fulltime. When I decided to quit my job instead, we had already paid our hefty, non-refundable registration fee to the au pair agency -- and much as I hated the thought of shelling out money when I wasn`t bringing in any, I hated even more the thought of throwing money away entirely. Also, I figured that sooner or later, I would answer the call of the paycheck, and start working again when the kids feel more settled. In the meantime, we won`t starve, but our bank balance doesn`t look anywhere near as good as it did a few months ago.

We have many friends who had au pairs in the past, and most had very positive experiences. We did the math -- it works out to be about the same as daycare for one child, and we have three. Plus, she can do errands and pick kids up at school, and is supposed to do babysitting, and light housekeeping if we ask her to. (In our house, this means she empties the dishwasher and keeps her own room clean.) She is not supposed to work evenings or weekends, or do heavy cleaning. Our au pair doesn`t drive, which means she can`t drive Big Son to his soccer practice, but fortunately both our elementary school and preschool are within walking distance.

The au pair system works this way: you register with the nonprofit au pair agency, pay your fee, and then go onto their Web site and choose your au pair. You then call her (usually her - male au pairs are rare) to make sure you feel comfortable with each other talking, and then you both confirm with the agency. They make all of her travel, visa and health insurance arrangements, and give her a few days of training before she arrives. If after 60 days it`s just not working out for some reason, you can request a different au pair.

At first, we planned to get an au pair from Japan, to help maintain our kids` Japanese. But on second thought, I realized that coming home everyday to a Japanese-speaking household could slow down the difficult process of getting them up to speed in English. So instead we chose an au pair from Taiwan, figuring the similar Asian culture and diet would make everything easier, and yet the kids would have to speak English to her.

I would sum up our au pair this way: she`s a good sport. She cheerfully accepts whatever gets thrown her way. She`s 25, and is the oldest of 4 kids in her family, so she sometimes seems very mature. But this is her first time living away from her parents` house, so at other times she seems much younger than she is. She is always smiling, her English is okay and the kids like having her around. If she has any major complaints or problems, she`s never told me, and I`ve never noticed.

What made the biggest impression on me in her file was that she worked as a nurse in a large hopsital in her home city for three years, and volunteered to nurse SARS patients during the epidemic there. In fact, one of the photos she sent was her posing with some of the other SARS nurses in their scrubs, and they were all smiling. I thought, "Whoa, this woman can be cheerful while nursing critically ill and dying people in an epidemic! The chaos of our crazy family life will be a cakewalk compared to that!"

And then she arrived, the day after we had arrived from Tokyo. She was greeted at SFO by a jetlagged family: two parents with fake smiles pasted on their exhausted faces, and three hysterical, homesick kids. Our furniture hadn`t arrived yet -- we brought her home to a bare room with an air mattress on the floor. Hub and I pretended to be happy, so that we wouldn`t scare her away, but the kids were incapable of pretending and woke up in a foul mood at the crack of dawn every day. I think usually happy Little Son screamed more the first three weeks in SF than he did his entire life to date. Through it all, she kept on smiling, and telling us how happy she was to be here.

I`ve never asked her how our home life compares to the SARS epidemic -- to be honest, I am afraid to hear her answer.

The Profit Motive is a Highly Underrated Parenting Tool

(Introducing a few new characters -- my older kids` school is partly staffed by Philippina nuns. At first glance, they all look alike, and it took me a while to learn to distinguish them -- they are mostly short, middle-aged, bespectled, usually smiling, and all dressed in identical habits -- white dresses with black veils, and belts with rosaries. Fortunately, they are all addressed as "Sister," which was very convenient those first few days when I was still stuggling to tell them apart.)

Big Son stomped out aft